Quality goal

The overall goal of the Chair is to comprehensively study minimal residual disease and contribute to the development of targeted therapies that will prevent emergence of lethal metastasis.

Investigating minimal residual disease is extremely challenging, as founder cells of metastasis are very rare. In mesenchymal tissues, such as bone marrow or lymph nodes, disseminated cancer cells, containing also metastasis founder cells, can be identified based on their epithelial-tissue origin. However, average detection frequency of disseminated cancer cells is one cancer cells among a million of hematopoietic cells. This implies that on average in a sample derived from an early stage cancer patient, only one and rarely more than ten cancer cells are found.

Analysis of these rare single cells requires high standard technologies. For example, one human cell contains 6 pg of DNA and an even smaller amount of mRNA. Therefore, one main research focus of the group is the development of novel technologies for molecular-genetic analysis of single cells. Another focus is also the development of new in vitro and in vivo models to further study minimal residual disease.

Research groups of LEX are arranged according to research foci and competencies. Implying quality management, we aim to ensure that all workflows are well structured and, including open internal communication and cooperation, lead to optimal execution of projects.